This choice should not be about personality or looks or commercial appeal. It should be about the fact this is a man who dedicated everything to Britain and the Olympics.

He competed in rowing for half a lifetime, he committed himself to his sport at the expense of all else. He won five Olympic golds but he did not achieve that feat in a solitary Games, as Michael Phelps and others have done.

It took Redgrave 16 years of graft and sacrifice and pain and tiredness and exhaustion to achieve what he achieved.

And so what if he’s a bit dull? Some of the highest achievers in life are dull. They devote ­themselves to something completely, to the exclusion of all else.

They do not let normal life intrude. They do not make compromises. They plough on and on.

It’s like that with ­journalism ­sometimes.

Some of the best ­investigative reporters are so obsessed with what they do that they can become conversation bores.

On and on about the same issue, month after month, year after year. But they’re the ones who get the big story in the end.

That’s what Redgrave did.

He went on and on.

He never let up.

From Los Angeles to Seoul to Barcelona to Atlanta to Sydney.

He won gold after gold.

To win a gold medal at five successive Games is a phenomenal achievement, particularly in such an intensely physical sport as rowing.

So when Greg Searle, the rower who won gold in Barcelona in 1992 and who is making a comeback this year aged 40, was asked yesterday who he would nominate as our greatest sportsman, he did not hesitate.

“I would go for Redgrave,” he said, “because he got what he got through adversity and he had that astonishing longevity.”

The debate about the greatest sportsman, prompted by Bradley Wiggins’ amazing victory in the Tour de France, has become ­intertwined with the issue of who lights the flame on Friday.

Bannister has a claim to be our greatest, so does Fred Perry, so does Wiggins, so does Sir Bobby Charlton, Graham Hill, Lennox Lewis, Sir Ian Botham and a host of others.

It depends what moves you.

It depends whether you value feats of physicality in sport or feats of great artistry. Or things that combine the two.

But surely the lighting of the Olympic flame should be the preserve of our greatest ­Olympian?

And surely it is not beyond the wit of the opening ceremony’s artistic director, Danny Boyle, to calm the concerns of those who want box office and devise a way of making Redgrave interesting.

We are an island nation.

We built our former power on dominance on the water.

Why not reflect that?

Let Redgrave row to the cauldron at the head of a flotilla of boats carrying other Olympic greats up a temporary River Thames.

It is not beyond modern technology.

Let’s hope the organisers do not overlook Redgrave because if they do, they will have done it for the wrong reasons.

It is to our shame that Bobby Moore was allowed to live out his ­tragically short life after football in comparative obscurity.

The achievements of men such as him, of men such as Redgrave - men whose victories say something about our national character - should be held up at every ­opportunity.

And the opportunities don’t come any bigger than lighting the Olympic flame.

Fingers crossed the organisers make the right decision.

Greg so glad to be an old Waterboy

Never get out of the boat! 'Absolutely goddamn right' says Greg Searle

Greg Searle told a funny story on Tuesday:

Seventeen years after he won a rowing gold medal in Barcelona in the coxed pairs, he decided he wanted to make a comeback.

He met with the GB rowing coach Jurgen Grobler.

“He asked me if I was sure I wanted to row rather than coach!” Searle said.

He is 40 years old, twice the age of the youngest guy in his rowing eight.

The rest of them tend to refer to him as Old Greg, he said.

“I expect to have a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes when I get out on the water to compete,” he said.

“The stuff on the water, the training, the competition, feels really similar to twenty years ago but the whole experience in my head is wildly different.

“The first time I came at it, I was young, totally enthusiastic, totally bulletproof.

“I had almost never lost a race and I just expected to show up the Olympics and win another race - and it was just another race.

“I had very little else in my life except rowing. Now, I have had a lot of interesting life experiences on the way, I am a much more rounded person with a lot of other things which are just as important as rowing in many ways.”

Searle, who had an office job before he decided to come out of retirement, also has a young family.

His commitment to the team means he has had to withdraw from part of family life and in particular the favourite male domestic duty of taking out the rubbish.

“Most of the other dads at the school gate have to put on ties and go off to the city, and I don’t have to do that,” Searle said. “I have a very special opportunity to be an athlete again.”

Searle also happens to be one of the nicest guys you could meet.

With the support of his family, he chose to follow his dream, which is what the Olympics should be all about.